After paying for electricity and rent, Ms. Minh Thu checked her account and found that the balance was only more than 600,000 VND.
Looking at the numbers on the phone screen, she cannot help but worry about a series of situations that may occur: "What if there is urgent work next month? If I get sick and have to go to the doctor or the unit delays paying salaries for a few days, where will I get money to manage?".
With a salary of 7 million VND per month, she has repeatedly set a goal of saving 2-3 million VND. However, the plan often fails because the amount set is too high compared to the actual living expenses.
Instead of continuing to wait for income to increase, she decided to start with a modest amount of money of 500,000 VND per month.
As soon as she received her salary, she transferred this money to a separate account, named "Risk Preservation Fund". The rest was allocated for rent, electricity, water, food, travel and essential needs.
Besides, she started recording small expenses that were often overlooked such as coffee, snacks, delivery fees and automatic registration applications.
Through review, she discovered that she still pays for a movie viewing platform, a foreign language learning application and a data storage package that has not been used for a long time each month. The total cost is less than 200,000 VND per month, but added in a year it can exceed 2 million VND.
She canceled unnecessary services, prepared lunch at home and applied the 24-hour waiting rule before buying an unplanned item.
After 6 months, my savings account has 3 million VND. The amount is not large but it helps me to be more proactive. When the car needs to change tires, I don't have to borrow from friends. When my mother needs to buy medicine, I also don't have to use a credit card," she said.
From the seventh month, Minh Thu learned how to divide savings into smaller portions. Each month, she plans to deposit 500,000 VND with a 12-month term. After a year, she will have 12 savings with different maturities.
From the 13th month, each month there will be an expired amount. If you do not need to use it, you can rotate both principal and interest; if important matters arise, you have an additional amount of money to consider handling.
This deposit method helps the accumulation be divided into smaller amounts, but the actual interest still depends on the interest rate, term and policy of each bank.
For Ms. Minh Thu, saving does not mean cutting off all personal needs. The important thing is to control unnecessary expenses and keep a portion of income immediately upon receiving salary.
“Previously, I thought that you had to have a high income to save. Now, I understand that a financial foundation can start from a small amount, as long as it is suitable for real life and maintained regularly,” she shared.
